Ex-CBI Director refutes Mayawati's charge against NDA

He was serving as special director in the CBI in October 2003 when the raids on Mayawati took place.

NEW DELHI: A former chief of the Central Bureau of Investigation has contested Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati's allegation that the NDA government had misused the agency to put pressure on her.

Former CBI director Uma Shankar Mishra told ET on Friday that there was no pressure from the then government to pursue cases filed against Mayawati between 2003 and 2005 and that it had acted on the orders of the Supreme Court.

"The Taj Corridor case was lodged on the orders of the Supreme Court. The CBI had nothing to do with the initiation of that case...CBI acted only on the SC's directions to probe the case against Mayawati," Mishra said.

He was serving as special director in the CBI in October 2003 when the raids on Mayawati took place. He was appointed as Director in December that year and remained at the post till 2005.

"The disproportionate assets case against Mayawati was an offshoot of the Taj Corridor case, as her properties were discovered during the raids on her regarding the Taj Corridor scam. There was no government pressure.

In fact, the CBI had tremendous evidence against Mayawati in both the Taj Corridor scam as well as the DA case," he added. Mayawati had said in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that in 2003, the BJP government had, for political reasons, got her entangled with the CBI in the Taj Corridor case, and that the CBI later also lodged a disproportionate assets case against her in 2003.

"National leaders of the BJP called me to Delhi in 2003 and asked me to form a pre-poll alliance with the BJP for the 2004 general elections. I refused. To put pressure on me, the BJP misused the CBI and got raids done on me and my family members in October 2003," Mayawati had said in the Rajya Sabha. "CBI also lodged by force a completely false disproportionate assets case against me.

The BJP carried on the propaganda for the last nine years. I went to the Supreme Court, which has given me justice in the Taj Corridor and the DA case." Mishra, however, termed Mayawati's assertion that the CBI targeted her without reason as incorrect.

"When we conducted raids on her regarding the Taj Corridor scam, should we have closed our eyes to the other cognizable offence that emerged regarding her disproportionate assets?" he asked. "The CBI was within its legal power to lodge a DA case.

It is another matter that the SC has, earlier this year, quashed the CBI FIR in the DA case on the grounds that it had never ordered the registration of that particular case...but the SC in now considering a review PIL and has clarified that the CBI is at liberty to probe the DA case as per proper procedure."